No joke, when I worked at a Whole Foods in boulder colorado (can you guess who this is?), we HAD to buy our Celestial Seasonings from the Whole Foods Distribution company, which meant it got shipped to us from Texas. What we weren't allowed to do was buy it directly from the factory which was about 5 miles away, which would have saved the trucking of all that tea from boulder to austin and back to boulder. It was also VERY difficult to get local producers on the shelves, I had never thought about it in terms of the 365 brand hegemony but it makes sense. On the subject of 365 brand shit, let me tell you I used to open up boxes of 365 stuff sometimes that had been mislabeled with Safeway Brand stickers. Which means that that same damn generic company make the same damn product and just labels it differently. I am not saying this is true for all products, but certainly many of them are like that. Oh yeah, I didn't make anything close to 13$/hour, that must be a new policy.

and not schwartz's, monkey! they sell smoked meat. i think you are thinking of warshaw.

For a relatively new local Portland, ME rag, the Bollard really impressed me with their latest fall 2007 issue (warning: PDF) centering around big organic retailer Whole Foods. Of note here is the fairly large price disparity between locally produced products and those from Whole Food's brand 365, among others. At first glance I could think up some excuses, like the local producers charge WFoods a lot more, but through some interesting reporting we learn that the further you dig the more questions you find, and the dirtier everything seems.

Acting as bullpen cleanup for the bigger main article, a second article on the economy grocery chain Save-A-Lot points out many great ideas that you won't see implemented at Whole Foods. I'll be honest, this one had me feeling nostalgic for the long-gone Schwartz's Warshaw's of St. Laurent in Montreal, where recycled cardboard box-as-grocery bag was a way of life. Gave me more warm and fuzzies than anything I read about Whole Foods, that's for sure.